Can Bernie win?
Only in America could a corrupt billionaire (Bloomberg) challenge another corrupt billionaire (Trump) for the Presidency and it be called Democracy.
The need to get rid of Trump is driving Democrats to find candidates like Bloomberg or a ‘moderate’ despite Democrat grassroots wanting Bernie.
Bernie is surging in the polls, is surging in donations and has won both of the last State primaries, yet the establishment is doing everything to stop him.
In 2016, the Democratic establishment strangled off Bernie in a rigged primary process and enraged the hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised Bernie supporters.
The problem for the Democrats is that they still don’t know why they lost to Trump.
Democrats like to point to the Russian interference in the 2016 election to explain Trump winning, but I think blaming Russia for ‘hacking’ the US Election is deeply counter productive.
Firstly, it’s just outrageous that the Americans who have committed coups, electoral fraud and mass deceptions on 81 other nations over the years are in any position to lecture or complain about interfering in other peoples elections.
Secondly, it allows the Democrats off the hook. Instead of acknowledging they ran a terrible candidate in Hilary and fielded neoliberal policies that hurt the very workers they had simply assumed would vote for them, the Democrats can avoid scrutiny of their own rigged primary process, the manner in which Bernie Sanders was unfairly treated and their hollow policies by blaming it all on Russia.
Newsflash to the Democrats – Trump didn’t win because of Russia, he won because you failed to appreciate how your embrace of neoliberal globalisation hurt the very voters you needed the most.
One estimate puts the budget of Russian interference in the election via social media advertising at $250 000. With all due respect for American Democracy, if you can influence an election with a mere $250 000, you have way bigger problems than Putin.
We can scream racist and sexist as much as we like at Trump voters, but when Trump wooed Union families, women and the working poor in such huge numbers, something else needs to be examined as the reason this malignant orange tumour of a human being has been forced upon us all.
The free market globalisation that the Democrats embraced has robbed the domestic working classes of their dignity and economic ability to survive. We’ve seen this working class cultural backlash in BREXIT, Scott Morrison’s win and Corbyn’s loss. Bernie Sanders understood this which is why he would have been able to woo those voters Trump needed back to the Democrats and beat Trump, but the vile corruption within the Democrats (who played to the elites within the Party) robbed Sanders of his nomination in a rigged system set up to prevent a populist left winger ever winning the candidacy.
More than any other Political President before him, Donald Trump has understood, harnessed and manipulated cultural political resentment in a manner that has tapped into deep seated economic anxieties caused by free market globalisation.
This union members who voted Barack twice and then voted in Trump aren’t racist, they’re the working classes who feel burnt by the Democrats for embracing neoliberalism.
Trump gave them hope that someone, even a racist sex offender, might hear their economic pain.
Trump is a master of negative populism and plays to the worst angels of our nature.
Winning the popular vote in America means nothing if you can’t win in the Electoral College and in those states Trump needs to win 2020, he is competitive.
Those working class voters in those States are the ones the Democrats must win over to defeat Trump, and I think Bernie Sanders offers those working class voters the best policy line up to convince them to vote Democrat this year.
You counter negative populism with positive populism, you offer hope instead of fear. Free education and free health care rather than punitive walls and draconian deportations.
You counter Trump’s hate not with Warren’s policy geekery or Biden’s passive progress, you beat Trump’s hate with Sanders hope.
The danger to Bernie is that the same corporate gatekeepers and Billionaire Plutocracy that rules the Republicans dominate the Democrats as well. Someone like Sanders who is such a threat to private health and private education interests at the cost of the Military Industrial Complex will never be allowed anywhere near power so the Democrat establishment will do everything to kill his candidacy off again.
The question isn’t can Bernie beat Trump, he can and will, the question is will the corporate interests who control the Democrats allow Bernie to be the candidate?
It will come down to the superdelegates. Where they are directed to vote will decide. You’re right, the Democratic Party did not learn anything from 2016. If Bernie doesn’t get the nomination and Bloomberg wins, what chance does he have in a general election?
Sanders is probably too socialist for most Americans to vote for.
Also query voting in a president who is pacifist, in the face of rising threat from a China.
Marketing yourself on slogans involving “hope” and “transformation” are now a big red flag for ineffectual leadership: see also Barack Obama, Jacinda Ardern.
You are right Bomber, the Democrats need to wake up to reality. Remember that although she was widely disliked, Hillary won the popular vote, but not enough in the crucial states.
Within the Democrat party, Bernie gave his votes to Hillary but in a similar circumstance, she gave none of her votes to Obama.
Bernie offers changes that will eat at the privatised for billionaires profit system put together over many decades, and designed to keep people poor, divided, fearful and struggling while the oligarchy use the money to rule.
The USA is not a democracy and universal voting rights have only been legislated since the mid 1970s. Still many citizens do not have a right to vote and of those who do half don’t vote as they feel powerless.
If Bernie can break through the wall of organised lies promulgated by MSM owned by billionaires, and get elected, he will need a wall of body guards.
HOPE is what Bernie offers and the majority of the USA sorely need. Most live in abject ignorance of the transformation Bernie is talking about. MSM sees to that.
I seriously doubt it. If the super delegates vote for him I would be astounded. The fact is the electoral system in US is geared to favour mainstream capitalist candidates and shut out almost everyone else. Just look at Dr Jill Steins (Greens) experience….
Trump will win and that will be that. If US voters want change then the whole system needs to be replaced with something fairer.
In any other time a speech that Trump or Boris Johnson does would have made everyone go this guy has lost it. So the left just can’t win normally. It’s no good the right can run away with the narrative and up end normalcy while the left is dissected. And Jacinda needs to be able to bully the media and she needs to be able to bully the leader of the opposition. And so does Sanders. Sanders has to come out hard against Warren, Biden, Pete and the DNC and denounce the whole circus on his way to bullying Trump into submission.
The Intercept reported that mini-Mike Bloomberg (Trump’s words) has spent more than US$300 million on broadcast campaigning so far and the media (on behalf of the elites) is loving their new daddy. In America personal campaign financing is allowed so Bloomberg has literally bought his way into their elections. A half a billion NZ dollars. Imagine what a legend he would be if he built a thousand homeless shelters with the money, or clothed and fed American kids and subsidised their learning (or extended the support to the countries the US has obliterated in the past decades), infrastructure, anything, instead of this grotesque scrambling of billionaire jets to defend the status quo.
Andrew, surely even the Democrats aren’t stupid enough to run Hillary again. And Jody, your fantasy is wishful but stupid. Bloomberg is disgusting so don’t conjure up something likeable about him, I beg you to recant!
Who is president affects us enormously in A/NZ. But we bleat from a distance. I suggest to the Democrats that they give Bernie an historical boost by linking him to “that man in the White House”, F.D.R. If he is seen as following on from Roosevelt, won’t that give him more legitimacy? cast off the maverick label?